Newspack Product Research and Evaluation

Role: Sole Researcher

Methods: Survey, Interview, Contextual Inquiry, Usability Testing

Impact: Product goals met and pilot program improved

In 2019 I started working with the News Revenue Hub, an nonprofit organization that helps local news outlets focus on building revenue and membership. The Hub was partnering with Google and Automattic to produce Newspack, a WordPress theme and plugin that would allow news sites to focus on making news.

I performed the original discovery research for the project in 2019; this included interviews and contextual inquiry with both editorial staff and development staff, in newsrooms that used WordPress. Based on my research, I modeled the flow of news creation, publication, and socialization in the newsroom, and made recommendations to the product team. The top two needs were flexibility in visual editing, including multiple media types; and robust audience engagement and revenue-generation features. The full report is available on the News Revenue Hub’s site.

In 2020 I evaluated both the finished product itself and the pilot program. We found that Newspack had solved editors’ visual needs in every way they had requested, but there was more work needed to fully incorporate revenue generation into the theme in ways that were competitive with other plugins and products. Finally, based on the pilot assessment, the team continued its documentation efforts to support self-service users. The full report is available on the News Revenue Hub’s site.

As of 2021, I am also working on a competitive analysis of payment processing products for the Hub.